I am reminded of a cartoon on bankers’ bonuses: two men walking along, and one explains to the other: “Apparently, if you don’t pay them enough, they go and bugger up someone else’s business.” If Obama’s proposal is made law, thousands of traders will be out of a job. What will they do?

Swiss central bank governor Phillip Hildebrand has taken a somewhat political stance, defending the universal banking model in an interview with Swiss daily Le Temps. A form of the Glass Steagall Act would not work in Switzerland, he said: wealth management and commercial banking should not be split.

The former banker explained: “The universal banking model represents a form of risk diversification,” quoting difficult periods in the 1980s when one side of the bank had been able to bail out the other. He added that ultra-rich customers needed the full range of investment banking services, for instance to help with mergers and acquisitions involving companies they owned.Read more

Some consensus among the American media that extending the US housing tax credit is a bad idea. And a conflict between those who think banks should be made smaller, and legislators, who are currently pursuing a strategy of better monitoring and increased powers over big banks Read more

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Chris Giles has been the economics editor of the Financial Times since 2004. Based in London, he writes about international economic trends and the British economy. Before reporting economics for the Financial Times, he wrote editorials for the paper, reported for the BBC, worked as a regulator of the broadcasting industry and undertook research for the Institute for Fiscal Studies. RSS

Claire Jones is the FT's Eurozone economy correspondent, based in Frankfurt. Prior to this, she was an economics reporter in London. Before joining the Financial Times, she was the editor of the Central Banking journal. Claire studied philosophy and economics at the London School of Economics. RSS

Robin Harding is the FT's US economics editor, based in Washington. Prior to this, he was based in Tokyo, covering the Bank of Japan and Japan's technology sector, and in London as an economics leader writer. Robin studied economics at Cambridge and has a masters in economics from Hitotsubashi University, where he was a Monbusho scholar. Before joining the FT, Robin worked in asset management and banking. RSS

Sarah O’Connor is the FT’s economics correspondent in London. Before that, she was a Lex writer, covered the US economy from Washington and the Icelandic banking collapse from Reykjavik. Sarah studied Social and Political Sciences at Cambridge University and joined the FT in 2007. RSS

Ferdinando Giugliano is the FT's global economy news editor, based in London. Ferdinando holds a doctorate in economics from Oxford University, where he was also a lecturer, and has worked as a consultant for the Bank of Italy, the Economist Intelligence Unit and Oxera. He joined the FT in 2011 as a leader writer. RSS

Emily Cadman is an economics reporter at the FT, based in London. Prior to this, she worked as a data journalist and was head of interactive news at the Financial Times. She joined the FT in 2010, after working as a web editor at a variety of news organisations.
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Ralph Atkins, capital markets editor, has been writing for the Financial Times for more than 20 years following an economics degree from Cambridge. From 2004 to 2012, Ralph was Frankfurt bureau chief, watching the European Central Bank and eurozone economies. He has also worked in Bonn, Berlin, Jerusalem and Brussels. RSS

Ben McLannahan covers markets and economics for the FT from Tokyo, and before that he wrote Lex notes from London and Hong Kong. He studied English at Cambridge University and joined the FT in 2007, after stints at the Economist Group and Institutional Investor. RSS